


After the Feet of Beauty

by Irrealia



Series: Awake, Arise, or Be Forever Fallen [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrealia/pseuds/Irrealia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose has picked up a few new tricks. Rose and the human Doctor, sorting themselves out immediately after Journey's End.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Feet of Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer** : I am not the BBC, but I play them on the internet.  
> You can read this as a sequel, if you like, to “[Faithful in Her Fashion](http://archiveofourown.org/works/181237),” but you don’t have to.

_OH, THINK not I am faithful to a vow!_  
Faithless am I save to love's self alone.  
 Were you not lovely I would leave you now:  
 After the feet of beauty fly my own.    
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,  
 And water ever to my wildest thirst,   
I would desert you–think not but I would!–   
And seek another as I sought you first.  
 But you are mobile as the veering air,   
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,   
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:  
 I have but to continue at your side.   
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,  
 I am most faithless when I most am true.  
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

Once everyone else is asleep on the zeppelin, the first thing he says when they are more or less alone is, "You never kissed me quite like that before."

"Circumstances never called for it," she replies casually.

"Nooooo, that's not it," counters the new new Doctor, leaning in to peer closely at her face under the dimmed lights of the zeppelin passenger cabin. It is his first chance to examine her properly without the looming threat of all realities ending, to notice the faint changes the slow path had wrought in her. "It wasn't the intensity, though that was lovely mind you. It was your technique. That bitey thing you did with my lip. You've never done that before."

"Your memory must be off," she said.

"My memories prior to the metacrisis are one hundred percent intact, as I believe we established earlier, and I'm sure I'd have remembered that. Blimey."

A beat.

"Were you always such a good kisser?"

"Were you always this rude?"

"Thought we figured out what kind of man I am a long time ago, Rose," he says quietly. "Rude. Not ginger. And so on..."

"Well then, must have had some more practise," Rose’s tone is a bit curt. "That's what you really wanted to ask about, yeah?"

A tremendously uncomfortable pause.

"You might have asked me about this before you decided to invite yourself along to my universe," she adds, just the tiniest hint of bitterness lurking in the low overtones of her voice.

The Doctor who is not quite the Doctor fidgets with his hair for a few minutes, certain there's a logical retort to her very pointful point about human etiquette. Rose stares out the window of the zeppelin. She knows that she could make him feel better by being who he needs her to be—Rose Tyler, age 20. Being whoever other people need her to be is practically her job at Torchwood. But Rose is very very tired, right now, and she doesn't feel like catering to anyone. She went to find the Doctor because Torchwood sent her, but this has long since ceased to be work.

\---

"The dimension cannon," he finally says. Jackie snores a little in the background.

"What about it?"

"You said you were building it so you could come back." His eyes are wide and hopeful. "So I assumed..."

"It's called being coy, Doctor." Rose continues to stare out the window while she talks. It's easier to stare at the grey expanse of sky than his face, the face she'd imagined seeing countless times before, on men who looked just similar enough. "Wasn't a lie though. I mean, we—Torchwood—we built it in case we needed you. Needed to get you back, if there was some kind of emergency. Something we couldn't handle. And when it started working, when the stars started going out, they sent me because I knew you. They knew you'd listen to me." She feels a bit guilty saying this out loud, because it's a fairly bald admission of how cutthroat she's become.

He doesn't really respond, but she can see him staring at her, reflected in the window glass. His mouth is set in a small straight line and his chin is up, but his eyes are big and brown and wholly open. They convey all the stoicism of a kicked puppy.

So she continues, not knowing if the rest of what she has to say is going to make things better or worse. "You said it was impossible. I could never go back. And I believed you, because I always believed you. I remembered what you said to me, when you sent me back from the Game Station. You told me to have a fantastic life. So, I tried. Pete set me up with Torchwood, I told you that. Been saving the world. That's brilliant, you know. Same old life, really. Welllll, with a lot more paperwork. And guns. And of course, you weren't there."

She looks at him briefly, over her shoulder. Her eyes would be full of tears if she had the energy to cry, but she's so far beyond tired now, she might never sleep again, and emotions, words, the stiffness in her whole body—nothing feels quite right. The Doctor, the new new Doctor, the Doctor just for her, has exactly the same expression on his face as before.

"Couldn't very well wait for you, you know," she says a bit lamely. "Guess I was dumb enough to believe you might actually want me to have a real, fantastic life." His reflected face shows that her barb has hit its target, and she feels a little bit guilty again for hurting him, and a little bit triumphant because she knows for once, she's got his number. It hadn't occurred to him that there could ever be someone else for her. Selfish git.

"So I didn't wait. I didn't wait with an awful lot of people. I ran, and I ran, and I didn't look back. Bit like you, yeah? Mum always did say I was becoming more like you."

"Oh."

"Yeah," she says.

There isn't really any response to Rose doing her best to do exactly what he'd wanted her to do, and there isn't a magic fix for all the years without him, for everything she's lost—twice. If anyone ought to know that, it's him. But her hand is lying open, palm up, and the least he can do right now is wiggle his fingers between hers, and feel her hand reflexively curl up into his.

They sit in silence for a long time. The Doctor leans his head on Rose's shoulder, and closes his eyes, dozing. She doesn't pull away. In fact, she closes her fingers around his a bit tighter.

\---

Rose's voice, low and questioning, breaks through his slumber.

"So you liked the bitey thing?"

Oh. Oooooh.

"It was fantastic. Not a word of a lie, Rose Tyler."

"Well then," she says. "I'll have to remember that."

And then she curls into him as best she can in their seats, and finally falls asleep.


End file.
